As the Obama administration’s much-touted “Recovery Summer” reaches its zenith, one is led to ask, At what point does economic recovery become simply a more gently modulated decline?
Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most — that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least. — Eugene V. Debs
A heat wave grips New England, making the days downright tropical. Thunderstorms, which come daily, bring no relief, only a kind of steamy weight and closeness. Air becomes almost too heavy to breathe. Everything is obscenely green, bringing to mind those films Werner Herzog made with Klaus Kinski in South America.
Under such estival oppression my mind drifts to — and lingers over — perverse themes. I find myself wishing for something Conradian: a glimpse into the heart of darkness; a confrontation with nature redacted to its essence, stripped of the borrowed finery of civil society.
Whither tarries, I wonder, the “Summer of Rage” predicted for this year, as it was for last? Some malcontents in France seem to have gotten their blood up in a reprise of the riots of 2005 (the 2005 uprising inspired this tract by The Invisible Committee, a collective of ultra-Left Jeremiahs intent on pricking the consciences of complacent bourgeois Ninevites), but nothing so piquant loomed for us stateside. Extreme heat dulls keener emotions and turns even the slightest action into a chore. But wilting under the sun is not just the person cursed to live in a home without air conditioning; opportunity shrivels also, the much touted “Recovery Summer” now appearing more as “Recumbency Summer” as budget crises bring rumors of rolling closures of firehouses in Philadelphia, as well as California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s threat to bust state workers down several pay grades. Read the rest of this entry »
I can’t say I was terribly surprised to read the lede, “A three-decade analysis of prior research reveals that American college students are not quite as empathetic as they used to be,” in 
The author of a 2004 
Sometimes I’m sad the bubble burst. Fortunately, Americans’ bubble-butts endure. ¶ The age of lenders pushing jumbo mortgages gave rise to eateries pushing jumbo portions — The Cheesecake Factory, as well as 
April draws to a close, and upon its heels approaches May. As this happens, I find myself in the midst of a change of seasons, professionally speaking. The sun is setting on my career as a university instructor, which in one form or another (graduate assistant or adjunct lecturer) I have been for ten years. The vagaries of adjunct life have left me without the prospect of teaching for the summer or fall terms, and I find myself lacking the motivation to approach other schools in the area, just to nail down a section (or two if I’m lucky) at a wage rate staggeringly incommensurate with my level of education. (This sentiment is rooted not so much in personal vanity as personal finances. I’ve loans to pay back, you see, for the privilege of living essentially as a journeyman forced to wander from one smithy of the intellect to the next peddling my skills.) ¶ I can’t say that I’m sorry to leave teaching. Quite the contrary. I couldn’t wait to get out. I’d only stuck with it for this long because circumstances in my life were such that I required and could afford part-time work, and because a certain natural inertia was in play. I’d been teaching long enough to have streamlined my course content and its delivery, which makes me feel kind of like a comedy tour comic. He leaves Vegas to take his act on the road. Every new audience means new life for his jokes.
Recently I found opportunity to watch Objectified, a 2009 documentary by filmmaker Gary Hustwit, whose previous outing, Helvetica (2007), peeled back the many-layered mystery of that ubiquitous font style. (Who’d have thought Helvetica, or “Helvetty” as Hipster Runoff’s Carles 
Like a bad penny, that hoary old heuristic known as “The Tragedy of the Commons” (hereafter TragCom) keeps turning up. Recently, it popped up on Business Insider‘s weblog Clusterstock, in an April 4, 2010 piece by Joe Wiesenthal. (The photograph of Ayn Rand accompanying Wiesenthal’s text should’ve scared me off, but I soldiered on anyway.) ¶ Wiesenthal applies the lessons of TragCom to the almighty American dollar. Our currency is the commons, you see, and, as such, it threatens to go the way of all commons: to — you guessed it — tragedy. ¶ But before I proceed further, I should offer a bit of background. TragCom goes roughly like this: Any resource to which people have common title will inevitably become exhausted. Therefore, only abrogation of this common title can prevent these resources’ depletion.
Facebook makes me uneasy. Signing up for it didn’t fill me with much enthusiasm (a career counselor recommended that job seekers begin a Facebook page in order “to network”), and I find myself logging onto it less frequently these days. The year or so I’ve belonged to the site has proven generally depressing. My opinion of certain people I know has changed — and not for the better — as a consequence of the trivialities and inane sentiments they regularly broadcast. I became party to a pathetic sort of high-school class cyber-reunion, having had my whereabouts discovered by former classmates whom I really rather wished would’ve left me alone. And I have constantly to ignore solicitations sent by others to participate in asinine surveys (all the while feeling like a jerk for doing so). But a few days ago, Facebook dealt me a blow that sent me reeling. It suggested that I befriend none other than my ex-wife.
To anyone living outside the northeastern United States, MTV’s The Jersey Shore, the cable network’s latest reality-television offering, is an encounter with the strange and unfamiliar. In my own experience as someone born in the Rust Belt, reared in the Midwest and educated in the Southwest, seldom did I encounter so-called “Guidos” and “Guidettes.” I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with “Guido” stereotypes; they were just rather remote from my experience — until I moved to New England, that is. Here the landscape crawls with Guidos. One can usually find them on the main drag of my neighborhood, leaning on Katana bikes and menacing popped-collared Ivy Leaguers. Or one can find them at the beach, again leaning against said Katana bikes.
Rob Horning
Ylajali Hansen